Shortly after turn 20 Armenia back-stabbed me and between their armies and the far more numerous Seleucid armies my armies I was forced to take a defensive stance. At this point I had 5 cities (Amasia, Sinope, Mazaka, Trapezus, and Galatia), but due to only being able to afford one army large enough to compete with all the Seleucid full stack armies in the area I was soon forced to abandon Galatia to its fate. Armenia besieged Trapezus, and the Seleucids besieged both Mazaka and Galatia while menacing my capitol as well. I was able to kill the stack near Amasia, and I successfully defended Trapezus and Mazaka. Unfortunately, there were just too many armies to deal with in time to save Galatia. It fell to the Seleucids, and with it my economy was drastically weakened, spoiling any chances of training another army to keep up with the many enemy armies I was faced with.
From about turn 25-40 I was able to manage to hold on to my remaining four cities by the frantic shuffling around of my one field army and more wire thin wins in desperate siege battles. Approximately turn 42 the Seleucids launched a surprise attack on Sinope with a full stack army that included elephants. This allowed them to assault on that same turn, preventing any reinforcements from being sent to the city, and resulting in the city's immediate capitulation. The next few turns saw yet more full stack armies from both Armenia and the Seleucids (still strangely not at war, despite not being allied and both competing for the same territory) attacking all my remaining cities simultaneously. By turn 48 I was left with only my battered field army (funds to retrain had long been unavailable due to my treasury being drained by constant sieges and eventual loss of territory) and my capitol of Amasia. At this point I decided to go ahead and bunker up inside the city's stone walls and take as many Seleucid and Armenian dogs with me as I could. Soon enough, a few Seleucid armies moved in and besieged my capitol, waiting a few turns to weaken my still formidable garrison before attacking.
The Seleucids attacked from 2 directions with plenty of towers, ladders, rams, and even a sapping point that went unnoticed by me for the time. I noticed that one force was significantly smaller than the other, and I realized that trying to hold the walls in two directions at once was not likely to succeed and that camping in the square would simply hand the tactical initiative to the enemy. I decided to place a few units of eastern spearman and all my cavalry at the gate they were set to attack in preparation for a sally that would allow me to make best use of my heavy cavalry advantage.
Before I go any further I should mention that my superiority in cavalry was probably the biggest reason I was able to survive nearly as long as I did. By keeping at least two generals, the battered remnant of the single unit of Pontic Heavy Cav that I started with (which I was never able to retrain due to a lack of funds and time needed to get the second stable building they were recruited in), a unit of barbarian mercenary cav, as well as a unit of Scythed Chariots (that fear effect was a godsend) I was able to cause chain-routes in the enemy forces time and again, even when heavily outnumbered. I also kept 2 units of Pontic Light Cav on hand when possible, but they were primarily just used to chase down routing units and prevent them from coming back. The few units of Pikemen that I started with were also invaluable, and once I was finally able to recruit more of them I expanded my pike core to 5 units that rarely needed retraining and easily killed just about anything they came up against (excluding the one time they actually had to fight enemy pikemen, and even then they only took serious casualties due to being at a serious a terrain disadvantage. I'll talk more about my thoughts on the battle balance in general in a bit. For now though, back to the battle.
I set my pikes up around the gate near the larger enemy force, and kept my other heavy infantry and skirmisher units nearby as support. I didn't bother stationing troops on the walls themselves as my pikes were far more useful in phalanx formation and my other infantry units were either too weak (i.e. eastern spearman and eastern mercenaries) or too depleted to compete with the huge numbers of militia hoplites they would likely be facing on the walls. Having set up both sides I began the battle. I immediately began my sally on the other end, rushing my eastern infantry and cavalry out the moment the battle began. Using basic hammer and anvil tactics I was able to quickly destroy the handful of militia hoplite units and militia cavalry comprising most of the flank force. A few towers did reach the walls, and instead of trying to chase them down I sent my sallying force back to the city square to reinforce my other side if needed, and to deal with the troops that were able to sneak in past my sally when needed.
Back on the other side the Seleucids were easily able to break down my gate, but instead of immediately charging through en-masse they waited while there men climbed their ladders and towers onto the wall. At this point I was somewhat worried that the enemy would go to the outlying towers and flank my pikemen guarding the gate, but they brilliantly moved all their troops on the walls towards the gatehouse and funneled down into my pike wall along with their comrades who began their suicide charge through the gate itself. The rest was simple cleanup duty, chasing down the routing units as the enemy's militia hoplites stood absolutely zero chance of breaking my phalanx via frontal attack. The result was a heroic victory. I clicked to go back to the campaign map and........ of course the game chose this moment to crash.
Anyways, even this victory would have simply delayed the inevitable by a few more turns. The city would fall sooner or later, whether to the next siege or the tenth, it was simply a matter of time. I figured I might as well call the campaign done, seeing as it crashed when my eventual defeat was already guaranteed.
What are my thoughts on the campaign overall? Pontus starts out as a fun but challenging faction. It has decent starting troops, but it has a decently long road to go before any troops of significant quality can be trained or retrained. I was forced to be very economical with the forces I did start with and rely heavily on weak eastern infantry and mercenaries to absorb as many casualties as possible. Economically I started off alright, though in order to maintain a large enough army to defend my small kingdom immediate expansion is a necessity. Unfortunately this created a bit of a vicious cycle. Other factions clearly had armies big enough to take down my starting army, and the only way to compete was to expand. This very expansion however, was the primary reason the Seleucids ended up declaring war on me as I gained a common border with them during my conquest of rebel settlements.
Now playing as Pontus, war with the Seleucids should be seen as inevitable. I expected to fight them and I expected to be at a disadvantage in numbers. I also expected to be able to overcome this disadvantage through superior battlefield tactics and campaign level strategy, and for a while I was right. Had the flawed (to put it as kindly as I can) RTW diplomacy not ended up showing it's ugly face so early I may have been able to establish a stronger position allowing me to whether the Seleucid storm, however it was not meant to be. Shortly after fighting off the first wave of Seleucid attacks, my ally Armenia decided that I was a goner and that they should get a piece of the pie before the Seleucids took it all. A dick move to be sure, but fair enough. This is total war after all. That being said, the Seleucids never so much as glanced in Armenia's direction and focused all their attention on me in the west and Parthia in the far east. Egypt was actually allied with the Seleucids, despite the fact that they were both competing to see who could conquer rebel Arabia first, and had a massive shared border. All in all, the Seleucids are just far too powerful with far too few enemies that can (or will even choose to try) to present any kind of barrier to their total ascendance.
Moving on, I'll give my thoughts on the battles themselves. While the units look awesome, the battles still feel like vanilla RTW battles to me. Units die at hyper speed and quick chain-routes are more or less the rule. In some isolated scenarios I've seen units holding their own in melee combat for more than a few seconds, but the slightest negative morale effect will send entire armies running for their lives in a matter of seconds. Maneuver has very little overall importance. If you can hold an infantry line and get one charge in to an enemies flank than more often than not you've just won the battle. Pikemen are unstoppable from the front, as they should be, and they seem to have much better morale than other infantry (though keep in mind that Pontus does not have any levy pikemen so mine were all second or third tier, thus having much better stats and morale as it is). Cavalry is the absolute king of the battlefield, with heavy cavalry and scythed chariots being particularly devastating. I didn't really get a great feel for archers as I only ever had the unit of them that I started with (similar to my cav situation I was never able to buy the second archery building to retrain them or get more of them), but they did seem to be extremely deadly. I couldn't say for certain if they were too effective as I had limited time using them and didn't face many of them myself. In fact the AI seemed dead set on spamming only a few basic troop types. Most armies I fought were almost entirely eastern spearmen or militia hoplites with a smattering of light cav or skirmishers. It was rare to see an army of any size comprised of less than 90% low quality infantry.
Sorry if this is a bit of an information overload. I know this is an early build and that a lot of this will probably change, but it's good to know what your baseline is. I've got some pictures from around the end of the campaign to supplement this, though all of them are from the campaign map. The battles go by waaaay to quickly for me to stop and take pictures while still trying to win them.
Things looking grim shorty before turn 50
My last stand
Overview
Rankings (Me, Seleucids, Armenia, Egypt, Parthia, Greeks)
Map at turn 50
A couple last thoughts before I end this. Besides the Seleucids, I noticed that the Thracians were quite powerful. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but Macedon did seem to get slaughtered pretty quckly, so that might need some balancing (though this is based on a single campaign). Also, Germania was completely destroyed shortly before this campaign finally came to an end. It seems that between the Dacians, the Britons, and the Julii they were surrounded by quite a few strong factions (another potential balance issue to keep an eye on).
I also noticed that in bridge battles my troops had an annoying tendancy to ignore the bridge and swim across the river instead, no matter how I tried to click. Even clicking directly on to the bridge they would still chose to take a 2 minute long swim instead of crossing the bridge right in front of them. I'd personally suggest removing the swim ability completely. I never felt like the AI was able to use it against me (in my total RTW experience, not just this mod) and it so time consuming and leaves your troops so drained that it is hardly a useful flanking option for the player.
On the positive side of things I love the map and the new unit skins. The mundus magnus map (at least I'm assuming that's the map being used) with RS2 environments looks fantastic. My final suggestions would be to get battles to last longer (increased morale and defence), and maybe add another faction east of the Seleucids to increase the pressure on them and force them to spread out their attention a bit (if possible some increased internal unrest for them would be nice too). Bactria could fit this role nicely (and I'm not just saying this because they are one of my favorite factions
).
Overall, this test has been much more enjoyable than the previous version even though my test campaign this time has been far less successful. Sorry again for the giant post. Hopefully this was helpful.
